December 31, 2008
Enter the Dinosphere
A T. rex and Triceratops at Dinosphere
When I was about five years old, my parents took me to a traveling robotic dinosaur exhibit at a local museum. I could hardly wait, but when I finally came face-to-face with the roaring beasts, I was terrified. I loved dinosaurs, but the gnashing teeth and waving horns were just too much for me; I found refuge around a corner to watch them in safety.
The staff at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis recognizes that as much as children love them, dinosaurs can also be very scary. Not every child will feel comfortable coming face-to-face with a Tyrannosaurus as they exit the dark tunnel leading into their dinosaur exhibit, the Dinosphere, and so they have a little cave where more timid visitors can hang back and play with soft dinosaur eggs.
Those ready to brave the carefully reproduced prehistoric forest will find a museum that not only displays some of the most dynamic dinosaur mounts yet exhibited, but encourages hands-on learning. Children are invited to consider whether Gorgosaurus killed a Maiasaura or was a scavenger, get their hands dirty in a simulated fossil dig, and interact with professional fossil preparators. It sounds like a young dino-phile’s dream, and I wish I was young again to have an excuse to learn and play in such an innovative exhibit!
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Oh man, I had a similar experience at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center. I believe the dinosaur exhibit has changed since, but it terrified me as a child. The entrance to the exhibit had a disturbing sculpture of a primitive deer-like mammal being swept over by a volcanic landslide, and once inside the roaring, moving, monsters on display had me in tears, my dad had to carry me through it. The outstanding memory was when my dad carried me to the “safe” spot, a little nook where a number of Dinosaur models and toys were on display (some I recognized from my own collection at home), and then as soon as I was feeling better and was prepared to maybe walk out, as we stepped out some kind of long-necked beast brought its head around right in front of me, gnashing teeth that I thought were much too pointy for a sauropod. Back into hiding for me..
The next time we went I found the whole thing had changed, the sculpture in the hall was still there, but I remembered a brightly lit room with several dull, brown Dinosaurs that resembled inaccurate toys, the sort where even the herbivores have sharp teeth (but were extremely scary anyway), and now the dinosaurs were colorful, and in more appropriate, life-like environments, with plenty of “cover” to hide behind or look at if the dinosaurs themselves proved too scary. To really help reduce the scare-effect, they even had a “naked” animatronic skeleton to remind kids that the dinosaurs weren’t real right at the entrance. It may be that I don’t remember it right, and I’m sure the newer exhibit is better, but I was a bit disappointed that I never got to go back and conquer my fears of that first exhibit!
[...] Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, home of the Dinosphere, is welcoming some new additions this week. As reported by local TV station WISH, the museum just [...]